The Catching Point – the most important sales activity

In my Blog Post Who Is Doing The Farming In New Sales I was pointing at in hunting we are so focused on winning the new customer in new sales that we forget pegging up the coming opportunities when it comes to farming.

Continuing on the same thought, it’s so easy to misplace or not even be aware of opportunities that exists. Instead, we invest so much time to do things right when it comes to the content of the sales process. We should at least drive our opportunities in three phases; Qualify, Propose and Close, and in each fill in information and check boxes of what we’ve done so the management can follow every breath we take (like the song by The Police…). Not only one of my clients implementing fancy new CRM systems digs into the goldmine it really is to configure, streamline and controlling their sales forces. And I don’t lie when I say that the amount of information required to fill in has exploded.

No wrong with that. It’s just that they think the catching of new leads and opportunities comes automatically when a new CRM is installed and configured. It will not. And without any opportunities registered, there’s no process to follow or nothing to follow-up.

The problem is that the sales rep don’t have enough information to qualify at the Point of Catching. Of course we will qualify, but not at this super-early point. It’s just like taking a few notes to remember what is was and to whom. And if It’s not complicated, the rep would do it – it had been a great support to him. Better than paper and pen, notes on parking tickets, napkins and you surely know where you took those notes, don’t you?

So, my suggestions for success:

Don’t even discuss sales process phaseswith your reps, they will be aware of that later on and then It’s much easier to discuss

Focus on what maximum three things a rep would note to remember a new opportunity – the Three W; WHAT to sell, to WHOM and WHEN.

Make the Point of Catching Mobile and Digital; use an easy app or similar

Make the In The Office List; that’s the list presented to the rep when in the office, structured weekly based upon the WHEN-date above

Following these simple rules, you would experience The Catching Point being the most important sales activity for your Company.
Good luck!